My Tribe Is Better Than Yours – By Paul Omoruyi

It is as shameful as it is pathetic that Nigerians focus more on what DIVIDE us as a people than on what UNITE us. I am perplexed and flabbergasted on how much MANPOWER (Time, Resources and Effort) Nigerians have invested in destructive and unproductive arguments/debates about My Tribe Vs Your Tribe.

A friend asked me recently rather frustratingly “God curse us for Nigeria”? One is tempted to ask this question because even the best and the brightest among us WASTE THEIR MINDS in unproductive things instead of applying it to design, build and produce new things. The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.

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Just last week, researchers in the United States say they made a huge breakthrough for a vaccine that prevents malaria, the disease that’s carried by mosquitoes and kills millions of Africans. We all know how Malaria Fever almost killed us as kids while growing up in Nigeria. While must it be Americans that invested their time/energy/resources/brain-power in research to find this cure when it is Africans/Nigerians that die from it daily?

Again “God curse us”? If we asked all the Nigerian pseudo-intellectuals debating Igbos, Yorubas and Hausa’s ownership of Nigeria to invest the same time in researching a cure for Malaria that they have invested in debating tribal affiliation, they will most likely not do it. Why? Maybe because we do not like anything good? Maybe because our minds work better in evil machinations than in good venture? Maybe we thrive in evil than in good?

While we waste our time talking about my tribe is better than your tribe, my people are better than your people, Lagos belong to us and not you, Edos are from Yorubas, Yorubas are from Edos, Nigeria is on downward spiral with a myriad of issues to be addressed.

If you invest your time in identifying just one of the many issues in Nigeria and spend less than 1 hour a day to THINK/Research solution(s), you would have helped moved Nigeria forward in your little way.

Folks, the trains have left the station. Nigeria/Africa is still wallowing in the throes of technological, socio-economical and political backwardness because you and I that are supposed to be the catalyst for development are wasting our minds and creativity in meaningless and unproductive discourse.

If you are an Engineer, what project are you working on? What are you building or plan to build? Are you a Chemist/pharmacist? What are you doing to solve a problem? Medical Doctor? What are you doing to add value to the medical predicament in our society? The needs are endless. Just a little effort will make a gargantuan impact.

Unfortunately, we all have outsourced our Minds/Creativity to the “Europeans”. A friend that works in Shell Nigeria once told that they did not work for 2 weeks because they were waiting for a “bolt” to be imported from Europe to fix their machine. The bolt was nowhere to be found in Nigeria! A Nigerian can as well design and manufacture that bolt if he/she invests time to doing so.

Why won’t Nigerians invest their time to doing something that positive and revolutionary? Your guess is as good as mine.

Let me stop my loquacity and ranting here. God bless you and may God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.